Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Today starts a new colour challenge at The Outlawz. It was my turn to choose the colour palette and this is the picture I decided on, for inspiration. You can choose any element from this for your card.

We don't have a sponsor this month, so Laurian is giving a $10 gift certificate for Raspberry Road Designs.

I love how the DT have made such different cards using this picture, so be sure to pop over and see what they have to inspire you.

I was inspired by the tree and the colours, so this is what I made.

Paper, I decided to use the flourishes from the tree and made my background.
Stamped the flourishes and then used Pan Pastels for colouring.

The image is a Hero Arts stamp, and I just lightly coloured the flowers.

Sunday, July 17, 2016

Good morning friends,
I hope you are enjoying a relaxing weekend, with good weather.

Today's post ...as the title says has nothing to do with cards, paper, stamping embossing or any of those things that I normally would be writing about. I hope I don't bore you with this post, but feel free to leave... I just want to talk about some of the things occupying some of my time at present.

As a young child I had a love for fabrics,wool, embroidery cotton and those kind of things. I am sure it was what rubbed off from my Mom and my Ouma. My Mom taught me all I knew about sewing and embroidery and my Ouma..using needles and yarn.

Eventually having own family of 4 boys to keep in clothes, I did lots of sewing and knitting, Crocheting and embroidery were my special hobbies, even though not always enough time for them. As my family grew older, sewing for them became less, but knitting still stayed, even though eventually with a knitting machine which allowed some time for other hobbies...stained glass work, pewter, and a few others.

After a time I started my own little craft business, Firstly with fabrics,... covering boxes, both wooden and heavy duty cardboard. and items for home decor all using fabrics. Then it all grew and branched out and other elements were added, and slowly paper came into the picture, decoupage becoming so popular., and my hubby retired from the business he was in and worked with me in producing ceramics and other items for my various crafts.

Paper crafts were a large part of my business and finally being encouraged by other crafters to start my blog in 2008. I was also invited onto a few Design teams then and was able to share my love for this new medium. Classes became very popular and in demand.

After 18 years my craft business had become a full time occupation for both of us and finally 3 years ago we decided to retire. Sold up, moved, to a retirement village and are now enjoying a relaxed lifestyle. OK you might now be saying ...so what...

I have now the time to take up my hobbies again. I saw a project ...The Joseph Jersey project, They were knitting jerseys for children in orphanages and needed kintters, so I started knitting for them. Great fun as they had to have lots of colour. What a pleasure to see the joy on the childrens faces when they received these lovely colourful garments. beanies and scarves were added to the list.

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I then decided to hunt for my crochet hooks as well and have had so much fun finding new designs and ideas on the various sites.
I discovered lovely granny squares, CALs and many other projects. I joined my first ever CAL, Saw a lovely pattern for Winks mandalas blanket which I had to try. So my first finished project.

I have a few others lined up, so I will have more to post at a later stage.

I think I might even take out some of my unfinished embroidery projects soon.

I will be posting some of these items from time to time, so it won't just be cards from now on. I will understand if you aren't interested in all of this, but thanks for letting me write about what I am doing other than making cards.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend, take care and see you soon with a card this time.

Friday, July 15, 2016

Happy Friday friends,
We are midway through the month and also through our challenge at Digistamps4JoyThere is always an optional twist and this month it is to add dies or punches.

The DT have made some awesome project for your inspiration. You do not have to use a DS4J image, but you do HAVE to use either a stamped or digital image on your project. The lovely prize is a $10 gift voucher, so do come and join in the fun.

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

The new colour challenge at The Outlawz has started. The inspirational photo and colour palette this week was chosen by teamie Cara with the twist to make it masculine. Choose 3 of the colours and come and play this week.

This photo reminds me of our Saturday morning walks at the moment. We do a Park run every Saturday in a lovely park with gorgeous trees and as it is now winter here in South Africa, a large number of the trees have shed their leaves, so the ground looks very much like the photo. A few weeks back we had a very misty morning and seeing the photo made me think of that walk.

As we don't have a sponsor this month Laurian, our team leader is giving a Gift Certificate as the prize.

The DT have made some amazing cards for your inspiration, so do pop over and see what we have for you. I hope you will join us this week,

I decided to go with 3 of the colours and the leaves for my card.

I embossed a card that I had coloured with Pan Pastels.. The design of the embossing reminded me of the trees.

For the leaf diecuts I used a Poppystamps die...gentle leaf. Coloured it with pan pastels as well and attached them with some twine through an eyelet.

Heat embossed the sentiment with copper embossing powder ...it doesn't look very coppery in the photo and attached it with brads.

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Good morning friends,
Here I am back with another challenge. This time at Let's Craft and Create there is a new challenge with the theme ..our 4 legged friends.

The DT have made some stunning cards for your inspiration and we invite you to go along and see what they have to show. You have a whole month to enter, so please join us.

For my card I decided to use my rhino dies. Here in South Africa our rhino population is dropping fasty. Almost every week we here of incidents where the poachers have killed more rhino and gone off with the horns. It is a national tragedy and all attempts at stopping this haven't met with success. Only last week at a private Rhino park less than 30 mins. drive from us another rhino was killed and just a year ago we were in this park with our family from overseas and saw these these magnificent animals.

Paper - My cardstock is actually black and I tried twice to capture it but my photo has come out blue.
I used a piece of handmade paper and tore the edges. I did some stamping with a script stamp and also a tree.

I cut the rhinos out twice. Once with black card and once with cork paper. It is kraft paper with a thin layer of cork. I have had this for such a long time and forgot that I still had some.

Cut a tag out of rippled card. Stamped a sentiment, and cut that out and layered onto the tag. Tied it with a piece of raffia string.

This is the first challenge for July and it is another colour challengeat The Outlawz. Laurian has chosen a flag for the colour palette this week. It is the flag of Antigua and Barbuda. Lovely vibrant colours to use.

We don't have a sponsor for this month but we have a a Gift certificate from Laurian as the prize, so that is surely something worth entering the challenges for.

I really had to think hard to come up with something for this week. Love the colours, but just couldn't decide on what to do. Mr mojo has gone walkabout, so this is the card I finally came up with.

I used a piece of Teresa Collins paper - Fabrications. It has a slight texture to it and I love the design.

I used a Nellie Snellen filling die and cut the hearts out of a sheet of foam. I didn't have any red foam, so coloured it with my Pan Pastel chalks.. Attached it to a black background.

Filled part of it with little punched flowers and cut out a sentiment with an Impression Obsession die.

Added pearls for the flower centres, 2 gems for the dots on the "i" and some blue pearls to finish.

Friday, July 1, 2016

A new month brings a new progressive challenge at The Outlawz. This month our team leader Laurian has drawn us a lovely image, which I think can be used for many different cards, If you look at the DT cards, there are different ideas for this image.

If you have played in the challenge last month you will be getting this image during the course of the day. If you are new to the challenge just go to the challenge page join up and let us have your email and you will be sent the image. Make a card during the month and you will get the next image and so it goes on. It is great fun.

This is how I used it.

The paper is from a very old paper pad of Forever friends..the good life.

I have coloured the image with Distress inkpads. My storm clouds went a little too 'stormy', but didn't have time to redo it.

Added some twine...not that great with knots, also a charm and brads to finish.